Chuck Versus the Wedding Dress
by Imagination-Parade
Summary: Sarah Walker thought she'd be alone for the day. That's why, when Chuck walked into the guest bedroom to find her in her wedding dress, she whipped around at the sight of his reflection in her mirror and shot him a positively deer-in-the-headlights look.


_Hello everyone! I know it's been a pathetically long time since I posted anything, but it's been 6 months since I watched the show, so I think I'm getting rusty. Anyway...this is just another crazy image I couldn't get out of my head, so...enjoy!_

_(and for the obligatory disclaimer - Chuck obviously isn't mine)_

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Sarah Walker thought she'd have the apartment to herself for the day. She usually spent Saturdays with her husband, but Morgan had invited them both out for a Day of Morgan, rambling about the Santa Monica Pier and sizzling shrimp and the latest superhero movie. Chuck's eyes had lit up, but it had all sounded like a bit much for the introverted former spy. She had insisted Chuck go alone, giving him some much-needed time with his best friend and giving them both a chance to unwind. After coaxing a promise to join them for dinner out of his wife, Chuck agreed. Silly as it may be, she was looking forward to having the house to herself.

She hadn't made any specific plans, but when Chuck left around eleven that morning, Sarah didn't expect to see him again until she met the boys at a restaurant later that night. Yes, Sarah Walker thought she'd be alone for the day. That's why, when Chuck walked into the guest bedroom's open door to find her standing in front of the mirror in her wedding dress, she whipped around at the sight of his reflection in her mirror and shot him a positively deer-in-the-headlights look.

Chuck looked confused for a moment before his face softened into a loving grin. She was standing in front of the full-length mirror, her slender body hidden in the mass of delicate white ruffles he hadn't seen in person since their wedding day. Her face was free of makeup, her hair was a frizzy mess, like she hadn't even bothered to brush it before she started exploring the apartment, and the clothes she had been wearing lay strewn across the bed. In the split-second he got to observe her, she looked to have been doing nothing more than peacefully staring at her own reflection. Sarah did a half-turn as soon as she him pop into the shiny glass in front of her, and the couple had silently held each other's gaze since he entered the room.

"What…uh…what are you doing?" Chuck finally asked.

She pursed her lips and looked towards the ground with a small smile on her face. "You weren't supposed to catch me," she said shyly.

"Playing dress up?" he grinned.

Her cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment, and she gingerly lowered herself to the bed, refusing to meet his gaze again. Keeping her eyes firmly locked on the floor, she said, "I don't even remember what I came in here to look for. I found the dress in the closet." She finally turned her attention back to her husband and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, change of plans. Morgan overdid it at the arcade, so we're going to order in instead of going out, and it felt kind of silly to call you when I could just walk thirty feet and…"

"Catch me in one of my not-so-finer moments…" Sarah laughed.

"What are you talking about? You…I mean…" Chuck stuttered.

"What?" Sarah asked. Chuck sighed.

"You look so beautiful," Chuck said. "Just like you did the first time you wore that."

"I think I was a lot prettier that day," she chuckled, fingering her disheveled hair.

"You look pretty now," he repeated. "But seriously, Sarah…why…"

"I guess I wanted to know what wearing it felt like," she admitted. She rolled her eyes. "It's nothing. It's…stupid."

"Baby, why would that be stupid?" he asked, assuming the spontaneous dress wearing was an exercise to recover lost memories. She shrugged. Chuck finally moved across the room and grabbed her hands. "Come here. Get up."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm helping," he promised.

"Helping with wh…isn't Morgan waiting for you?" she asked.

"I'll go back in twenty minutes, he'll make some joke about a mid-afternoon quickie, and it'll be like I never left."

Sarah's eyes widened. "That's not what you're trying to do, is it?"

Chuck laughed. "Not today," he said. "I came over to steal a kiss and tell you not to go to the restaurant. Just pop over to Morgan's whenever you feel like it. You can wear this if you want." He grinned again and kissed her cheek.

"I think that would be a little much," she sarcastically replied, tilting her cheek into his lips to get the most out of his gentle kiss.

Chuck held her waist and positioned her back in front of the mirror so he was standing behind her. They looked at their reflection for a moment before he softly asked, "You're trying to feel what you were feeling in the pictures, right?"

"I think there's at least one wedding picture in every room of this apartment," she said, purposely avoiding the question.

"_Hello_, newlyweds," he said, as if covering their home in their wedding pictures was the most obvious decorating decision in the world. She laughed again. He fluffed up some of the ruffles she had been sitting on, then spied a tan-colored hair tie on the bedside table. He grabbed it, dangled it in front of her face and teased, "Speaking of being _everywhere_ around here…"

"They multiply on their own. It's not my fault," Sarah shrugged. Chuck reached for her hair, and she flinched. "What are you doing?"

"I'm helping!" he said again, running a few fingers through her hair.

"Oh, no, Chuck, that's not…" she started.

"Now I know you've seen the pictures, but when we got married, your hair was kind of like…" he started, gathering her messy blonde curls into his hands. "Okay, this is going to be hard. You had so much more of it then."

"Right, because _that's_ why you won't be able to recreate the hairstyle it took Carina an hour and a half to perfect," she teased.

"Hey, you remember that! That's awesome," he said, still trying to pull her shoulder-length hair to one side.

"Yeah, I remember a…" she started again.

"Ta-da!" he said, as she finished (or, rather, gave up on) her hair.

Sarah didn't quite know what to do when Chuck stepped back so she could observe his work. He had tried crafting her hair into a side bun, but it ended up being a side ponytail, with the half of strands too short to reach around to the other side of her head falling back in her face.

"Chuck, that's terrible," she laughed. "Sweet, but…terrible."

"And we're not done yet!"

He disappeared into the closet, pulling a shoebox she didn't recognize from the top shelf. She tried to stop him again, but he was on a mission, and there was nothing she could do to slow him down now. He pulled one of her wedding shoes out of the box and sat down on the bed.

"Your foot, Cinderella," he requested, holding out his hand.

She noticed the height of the heels on the shoes and curled up her nose. "I think I'm going to be a barefoot bride today," she decided.

He put the heel back into its home and grabbed her left hand. "And you're already wearing the most important accessory."

"Yes," she smiled, playfully wriggling her hand so the diamond he had given her sparkled in the artificial overhead light.

Chuck held her hand and looked her up and down. He had turned her hair into more of a mess than it had been, and in her bare feet, he hypothesized that she was about five steps away from tripping all over her dress. He kissed the palm of her hand.

"You really do look beautiful," he said softly.

"Thank you," she smiled.

"At the risk of ruining this wonderfully frivolous moment," he said in a soft voice. "Do you remember anything?"

"Your sister cried when I walked out of the dressing room wearing this," she said.

Chuck laughed. She was always coming up with memories he had previously not been privy to. "That sounds like Ellie."

"I almost didn't try it on. Nobody told me that wedding dress shopping involves being nearly naked in front of strange salespeople, and I wanted to get out of there and go back to my personal CIA closet," she said.

He frowned. "Not sure I needed to know that one."

"But this dress looked so pretty, so I agreed to try one more. Ellie cried. I cried. _Again_. I didn't know I was the princess dress type of girl."

"Yeah, I think that surprised all of us," he chuckled.

"But the wedding…" she started, trailing off as if she didn't remember anything beyond finding the perfect dress in a shop with her maid of honor. She let the silence between them hang in the air for a moment before she dropped the ruse and grinned. "Chuck…I think you may have taken it the wrong way when I said I wanted to know what wearing this felt like."

He looked confused again as he pondered her words. When he got it, he dropped her hand and laughed. "You remember wearing it the first time."

"Ah-huh…" she admitted with a smile.

"You just found the dress in the closet and wanted to put it on again."

"Something like that," she said.

"You let me do _that_ to your head to try and help you remember... " he started, pointing at his decidedly poor hairstyling skills.

"That was cute," she giggled as she pulled the tie out of her hair.

"And you remembered this whole time!"

"Guilty," she admitted, cutely looking towards the ceiling.

"So…you just wanted to try it on again? Now that it's been a while and we're married?" he said.

"And happy," she said. "Despite the odds."

"And happy," he repeated, matching her grin. He then shot her a look and added, "Sneak."

"I said you weren't supposed to catch me," she smiled. She turned to the side and lifted her arm. "Okay…unzip me."

"Putting it away?" Chuck asked, pulling the zipper down its track.

She grabbed the t-shirt she had been wearing and shuffled into the closet to return her wedding dress to its hanger. "Don't want anything to happen to it!" she called. "Molly's already called dibs on it anyway."

"She did, huh?" Chuck called back.

"Yeah, we watched the video last time Mom came over, and Molly fell in love," Sarah said, reappearing from the closet in nothing more than one of his old Stanford shirts and white panties. She fell onto his lap, her arm naturally falling around his shoulders, and added, "She says she wants Morgan to marry her, too."

He chuckled. "Morgan will be so thrilled," Chuck deadpanned. "So…I have to admit. I was _pretty_ _curious_ about what you were going to do all day."

"That was not planned," she said again.

"Remember when I teased you about turning into a real girl?" he asked, unsure of whether she would remember that or not. To his delight, she knowingly narrowed her eyes and nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think you're there, Sarah."

"Shut up," she said.

"But I love it!" he said.

"I love you," she sighed. "I don't say that enough."

"You don't have to say it, honey. I know you do," he promised.

She shrugged. "But I like it when you say it."

He shook his head and with a grin said, "Oh, you _are_ a real girl."

She chuckled and curled her hand around the back of his head, pulling him in for a long, tender kiss. Sarah let out a soft moan as she pulled away and glanced around him to check the time.

"How long do you think you have until Morgan comes through the window looking for you?" she asked.

"I don't know," he muttered. "Ten minutes or so. Why?"

She slowly fell off of his lap and onto the mattress, pulling him down with her. "About that mid-afternoon quickie…"

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_Thanks for reading!_


End file.
